This was the sixth play to arrive in the Sarsina series (with four more then in the offing), which provides affordably compact individual editions that present would-be definitively collated and witnessed texts plus apparatus, and no frills. As the author's first name says, they are written in Latin. Q opened the account with Casina, and the sister volume of Lecturae on Bacchides in the Ludus Philologiae series also appeared back in 2001. Q's first thoughts on editing Bacchides were published forty-five years before the arrival of this, Q's third shot at Plautus' version of Dis Exapaton:1 Plautinissime, the first edition of 1965 underwent a second recension (1975) in the aftershock of Eric Handley's unveiling of the substantial fragments of the Menandrian original (1968).2 This at a stroke shot the sadly acephalous Bacchides up on(to) the list of priorities in Roman Comedy, as the re-dedication of the present edition to Eric still attests; so it is egregious nonsense for Q to stick so rigidly to the Sarsina format as to exclude the Greek from its proper place as appendix (six pages in the second edition). In the meantime, John Barsby's handy 1986 edition, featuring a verse translation especially attuned to the Latin metres, opened up the script for Anglophone enjoyment of its fun, but without so much as presenting an apparatus.

Q's 2008 edition attends to his predilections: codicology and cantica metrics (with many pp. refs. to his magisterial publications). A closing appendix profiles the colometry (usually following the lead of the Vatican Ms B) in a full Metrorum Conspectus (pp. 105-08), and much information and admonishment is tucked into the app. I notice new errors only at 78 es for est, 555 dico for dic; cf. 379-81, app., elecutionem. By some quirk, Q always spells Adrian Gratwick .

The constituted text (based on fresh reading through the manuscripts) includes minor revisions and reversions, but there is precious little disturbance, and the intent to make accessible a lucid and assured conspectus of the paradosis and its critical history is now achieved. Q has always respected the codices to the letter, and from Lidus, Crisalus (but Mnesilochus, etc) in the list of Personae onwards, provides an elaborate running account of orthographics, scene headings and speaker assignation, of notae and supervenient--esp. Poggian and post-Poggian--hands, and the like, streamed above the apparatus proper. The (u-not-v) text is now peppered with qum, Talem, simbolum, ausculantem, and other such antique beauties, mi and nil are now generally preferred to mihi and nihil (with nec for neque at 146, 996), and hiatus is now regularly upheld (as 113 te | for ted.; 171 | abii for abivi; 196 illo | for illoc; 311 illo for illoc; 678 me | for med; 740 te | for ted; 766 illum | for Camerarius' illunc; 799 illi, | for illic (Ritschl); 913 ille | for Aldus' illic; 987 | Ilio (not Lindsay's illi Ilio); 1071 | integrum kept (not Ritschl suppl. iam i.); 1094 me | for med). Once they come into the reckoning (accedunt), the app. minutely records all legible features of the damaged Ambrosian text, known since Handley to be an improving recension (as in the ordering at 496-9), and every Menandrian parallelism, together with an indication of its upshot for Plautus.

Ancient testimonia, climaxing in a poignantly unanchored noenum, are for this edition held back for an appendix (pp. 96-104), to slight irritation given our dependence on a score of fragments for knowledge of the opening scenes and prologue, and given the consequent need to assess the critical shifts in the apparatus against the witnesses now severed from them--reserved for later. At 10, Q finds no place for Hermann's expressive halitant. At 22, he now omits mention of Arnott's qui. 23 anteit [malis] (suppl. O. Skutsch) is kept (not Leo's [fide]).

Much cry; little wool? Q hasn't so much shown up deficiencies in (e.g.) Lindsay as secured the text in its transmission, and keeps his readers alive to its transformation through critical attention. If bound together as a complete corpus, the Sarsina Plautus will be a monument: so far as Bacchides is concerned, Menander must be included; and so far as Q. is concerned, it's unfortunate that we now have his strike three prefaced by just a single-page Monitum, where the second edition accommodated a full Nota Introduttiva over eighty pages to precede its now superseded text. In particular, his multi-tiered diagnosis of Chrysalus' mighty Troys-'R'-Us lecture requires more than any app. could possibly tuck in.

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Bryn Mawr Classical Review (BMCR) publishes timely reviews of current scholarly work in the field of classical studies (including archaeology). The authoritative archive can be found at http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu.

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